'The Walking Dead' actor has Lafayette connection

By day, Alexander Miera is an unassuming employee at his grandparents' music store in Lafayette.

By night, he's a zombie.

Or sometimes a guard, protecting a small settlement of refugees from zombies.

When asked, he also dabbles behind the camera as a production assistant -- whatever's needed on the set of AMC's hit series, "The Walking Dead."

Miera, 25, caught on with the blockbuster series during the filming of its third season, which is currently airing on Sunday evenings.

"I've always been into acting, but I sort of fell into this one and caught a lucky break," said Miera, who has been a fan of the show since it launched, hosting "The Walking Dead" parties and catching episodes with a group of fellow enthusiasts at a diesel filling station near the Sharpsburg, Ga. filming site for the series. "I've probably watched every single show 20 times. I made it a goal of mine to get on it. I think they finally saw my determination."

Each 16-episode season of "The Walking Dead" is broken into two halves. The first episode Miera appeared in was the eighth episode of the third season, or the last episode of the first half. He has appeared in each episode since, in varying roles.

"I've played a few zombies, in the background so I'm blurred out," Miera said. "The first time I played a zombie, they didn't even put any makeup on me."

But Miera is most recognizeable as a guard at Woodbury -- a role Miera admits isn't glamorous but gets him the most camera time.

"Essentially, we stand around the walls and watch out for zombies," he said. "The scene I'm most identifiable in was a scene where some of the main characters were captured ... and (guards) corner them with zombies. I have a zombie on a leash of sorts, but it's more like a big pair of tongs."

Alexander Miera (Alexander Miera / Courtesy photo)

During filming, Miera actually broke the tongs on the zombie cast member's neck, and one half of the device is visibly missing in the scene.

Miera said his speaking lines are limited, but said, "I do yell, 'Kill him' a lot."

Though he's not getting famous from the on-screen work, he said he thinks most die-hard fans would at least know his face.

"People who watch the show would recognize me, but they wouldn't know my character's name," Miera said. "I'm just 'guard.'"

Miera was born and raised in Thornton, and graduated in 2005 from Broomfield's Legacy High School, where he took drama classes though never appeared on stage.

Miera went to college for heating, air conditioning, plumbing and pipe-fitting for two years, and admittedly "cheated" his way through a year at ITT Tech studying electronics. But he never found his calling.

"I had different plans for myself," Miera said.

Though his work on "The Walking Dead" is far different from the past two years he has spent at Lafayette Music, owned by Mark and Janet Benassi -- Alexander's grandparents -- he hopes to mix it up and spend more time on the other side of the camera when work begins on season four.

He said as a part-time production assistant during season three, much of his work was organizational -- something that's not always a cinch considering it involves herding hundreds of zombies.

"When I was a production assistant, one of my jobs was to keep track of all the zombies, keep a zombie head count," Miera said. "You don't want to lose a zombie."

Miera said while he has enjoyed watching the third season unfold this winter, he's looking forward to getting back to work on set.

And it's the zombies themselves he misses most.

"Everyone there is a family. There's not a cast member that I have a bad thing to say about," Miera said. "When we finished the last season there were tears because we knew it was the last day we'd see each other for a while. I don't see myself ever working on a better, more inviting set than 'The Walking Dead.'"